Calvin as I have just explined to you salt should be used for short term baths to rid koi of parasites and vica versa in the case of marine fish , it appears to me that whilst helping you we have recieved one bombshell after another on stocking levels you said 9 koi but really meant 17 fish now salt to protect koi from the effects of nitrites when the most toxic of everything in the pond is Ammonia .
When salt is used in the pond it then stays in there and has to be removed by water changes . if you need to use chemicals it can cause problems expecially with Malachite green, if you have to use it to treat your fish, did you know that if you have a Ph reading of 8.5 that in certaain cases rather than be benificial to your koi it wold infact turn it toxic which would then put your koi at serious risk of harm perhaps even death.
The best thing you can do to protect yourself from any of them is to not over feed feeding your koi, feed only that which they will eat in a five minute period. nothing more than that if your unsure less is best ok ......
Run a well maintained pond which is plain old common sense . "If I locked you in a room with a and added smoke to it then you would eventually die yes" ? well it's the same with any fish not just koi if you dont maintain the pond by regular vacuuming if you dont have a bottom drain you'll get problems with your fishes health (I wont go into all the things that could befall your fish but there are many incuding fungal and bacterial issuses.
Well maintained filters and water changes on a regular basis along with weekly perameter checks all go to help in keeping your pond clean in ballence and Healthy equipment such as U/V-C's should have their bulbs changed on a yearly basis this is because after 6 months of continual use they become half as effective and after a year are all but useless, so make sure your UV-C is replaced yearly .
Weve idenified through sissys posts that the filtration you are using can become blocked at intervals less than what the manufacturers recomend and that you should upgrade as soon as you can or make your own filters out of a couple of 45 gallon plastic drums or buy second hand from someone or if you can afford it buy new remember the greater the fish load of koi in the pond the greater amounts being processed by their intestine and passed out of there rear end (koi do not have stomachs just a slighly modified intestine).
It may be a good idea for you to by a lined book and create a section for pond maintenance , filter maintenance, water perameters, koi treatments and the results of those treatments and equipment replacement dates .
After about a year of writing your results etc into this book you'll see that it is giving you a working model of whats going on in your pond what you did to maintain the pond , the filters water perameters and treatments .
It will show you what you did to correct water quality issues what the readings wherre etc and more importantly the results of treatments to your fish what you used and what the results of the treatments where .
We kept those type of notes like this for over 20 yearsCalvin and it was well worth the effort
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Buy books on our hobby especially treatments for fish diseases bateria virus's , koi appreciation etc use the thread we did on our own library to get the details of each book then buy from Amazon Books US.
If you cant afoard new ones buy good condition second hand ones instead pretty soon you'll own your own koi library which builds into a sort of reference library , where you can cross reference things and after a while find a middle way through the differences of the same infornation each Author gives you , for example one says to equalize the differences in temperatures of water when floating a bagged koi proir to release , one says 30 minutes whilst the other one says an hour (which does happen) , so you say ok guys this is what your both saying I will do it for 40 minutes and meet them both each way
Buy a benching /treatments bowl from Ebay ours only cost £19.00 UK rather than buy exactly the same thing but at hugely marked up prices from koi dealerships use it for your salt dips anethatizing your koi etc .
Buy a microscope learn to take scrapes how to anethatize your koi, even build your own koi first aid kit from scratch using mainly household items .
Learn what to do and what to look out for when buying koi from either dealerships or private individuals "you already got ripped off on the 4 step Kuhaku" even how to build your own QT fasility .
We and others have done threads on all these subjects you can go into peoples profile pages ad click on the wording at the bottom of postings and bring these all up for you to use in learning about the hobby at the end of this you'd make a pretty fair koi keeper wouldnt you eh Calvin?
Bellow are the things I'm talking about from the library to the first aid kit and I've even added a koi linage chart so that you can understand them that much better.
All you need to do is apply yourself and use the threads on the forum to enpower you to do this
By the way the library picture is well out of date as we have now added many more books to it
Plus we bought a larger sturdier shelf after a bad fall I had trashed it when my weakest knee gave way one day without warning sending me flying
Dave
